What Is a Dollar Worth?

Perhaps nothing

FIG. 1: Michele Bachmann clears it all up: "A dollar in 2011 should be the same as a dollar in 1911. A dollar should be worth a dollar."

The latest cliché, spouted with equal opportunity at cocktail parties and at Tea Party rallies [fig. 1] and in op-ed sections and on the street, is that the American empire is in decline. You don't have to make any pretense of an argument anymore; you can just slip "the specter of American decline" into conversation, even though the idea is patently, obviously absurd: America has the most productive economy in the world even in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression; its crime rate is the lowest in four decades; it has the world's strongest, most battle-tested military; and it remains the source of the best ideas, both technological and cultural, on the planet. This is not how empires look when they're declining. It's not how Britain looked in 1956 or Rome in the fourth century. America is not in decline. It's just losing its religion, and its religion is the American dollar. Faith in the buck is being shaken as never before.

ABC/Getty Images

ABC/Getty Images

FIG. 2: The Lord also, apparently, wants you to wear a shit-eating grin.

The dollar long ago became the transcendent value in American life. Even in American religion, cash is the religion. (The pastor of the largest church in the country, Joel Osteen [fig. 2], declares outright: "God wants to increase you financially.") Pop culture, as the unofficial but actually practiced religion of the United States, is just as much a prosperity gospel. Films are judged by their opening weekends, books by the size of their advances, actors by their per-picture fees. The beauty of theMint app for the iPhone, the most popular personal-finance application, is that you can actually see your self-worth play out in real time. But as the dollar has become the one credible marker of judgment, the question of what a dollar is has come to be mystifying. That is new and unprecedented and terrifying.

This month the bruising debate about the debt ceiling is set to resume, and we can expect no better sense or better outcome than the last time. Hysterical positioning covers widespread and fundamental confusion. As sound as the dollar was once proverbial; now the expression can only be used ironically. Milton Freidman, after Nixon ended the gold standard in 1971, wrote that money had become a fiction that veils its fictionality. That veil is now starting to tear and fray. For the far Right, the debasement of U. S. currency is the latest shibboleth for identifying true believers. South Carolina state legislator Mike Pitts introduced legislation to make U. S. currency illegal in his own state, and to make gold and silver the working legal tender, not because he believed it would ever pass but because he wanted to make a point: The American dollar ain't worth shit. Maximum-strength libertarian Ron Paul, who has, it must be said, stuck to his belief in the return to the gold standard with saintlike patience and a personal integrity virtually unique in Washington, is no longer some lunatic fringe outsider; he's chairman of the House subcommittee on monetary policy. His debates with Fed chairman Ben Bernanke [fig. 3] are fascinating discussions by men proceeding from antithetical assumptions. When Paul asked, "What is your definition of the dollar?" Bernanke could give only the nonanswer "It is the buying power of the dollar ... that is what is important." In another exchange, Paul asked, "Do you think gold is money?" To which Bernanke replied, "No. It's a precious metal." Either Paul or Bernanke must be not just wrong but insane, and yet they are the two men most responsible for shaping what the American dollar means.

FIG. 4: Kanye and Jay-Z know how to make a subtle album cover.

The wider culture shares the identity crisis. Even Jay-Z, architect of a musical career all about the Benjamins, seems to have reached a kind of financial and creative stasis. Watch the Throne [fig. 4], his recent collaboration with Kanye West, celebrates yet again all the splendors of easy money — from owning cars you don't drive to buying art by Basquiat, the Cristal of artists — but also a new idea, "planking on a million," lying perfectly still on a big pile of bills. The album's title is a giveaway: The throne is the ultimate symbol of opulence, but it is also empty. Kanye and Jay-Z are sitting on top. But what are they sitting on? (Kanye already recognized the problem in his great 808s & Heartbreak lyric: "My friend is showing me pictures of his kids / And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs.")

Kanye West and Ron Paul — diametrically opposed specimens of the human race in every other regard — are tormented by the same reality: They worry that the dollar is ultimately empty. As a symbol of purified materialism, the almighty dollar is supposed to comfort us with its certainty, when in reality nothing could be more vague, more ghostly. Paul believes that gold will end the confusion, while Kanye wants to see if doing cocaine off a dark-skinned woman can help. The long-term satisfaction of either man is unlikely. The faith has been shattered beyond repair.

Popperfoto/Getty Images

Popperfoto/Getty Images

FIG. 5: "No, this time capitalism is doomed. Really. This time for sure, it's a goner. Poof."

But losing your faith, while painful, can also be liberating. The attraction of dollar value, which Marx [fig. 5] predicted as the transformation of all "personal worth into exchange value," wasn't the same as greed; it was really just laziness. Reducing everything to the dollar makes life so simple. Want to know if God loves you? Check your bank account. Want to know if your art is any good? How much did it go for? When the dollar becomes confused, the easiness of those answers disappears. Losing the dollar as the marker of all value might reveal new possibilities of worth, for people and for things, even for the world. After all, there's more to life than a little money, isn't there?

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